Forfeit
by bcbdrums
Summary: "So, Dr. Drakken?" Drakken stared at the interviewer's face. "I'm sorry... Can you repeat the question?" "How do you feel about the people you've killed?" Drakken's heart pounded as more and more images flashed before his eyes. He swallowed slowly, his throat dry. Ultimately, her death was his fault. He couldn't deny the reality he had created. "I feel...pain," he said quietly.


**A/N: Rated teen for descriptions of violence and death and sensitive subjects. Saying more will give too many spoilers. This fic is a post-Graduation fic. It was inspired entirely by this lovely artwork which you must view now, right here (remove spaces and obvious typo): gothicthundra. tumblr. kom/ post/188037118744/color-prompt-set-b-13-drakken-pyrrhic **

**Yes, this is AU and a deathfic.**

* * *

_"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"_  
Matthew 16:26a ESV

_Drakken's heart pounded in his chest as he ran, following almost absentmindedly after the flowing and tattered graduation gown that Kim Possible wore as his eyes darted back and forth across the corridor. On one side were windows to outer space, revealing its velvet blackness with the tiniest of lights peeking through that he knew were stars, only he couldn't recognize their positions. The other side of the corridor was an indestructible alloy, except by the aliens' own technology he had witnessed months prior. _

_He was trapped. And he was terrified._

_The sound of depressurization and rockets grabbed his attention and he peered past Kim to where two figures were racing toward them on jet-packs._

_"KP!" a familiar voice cried._

_"Ron!" Kim answered. Drakken's thoughts continued to the logical but impossible conclusion as he looked beyond the blond-haired boy to the other figure racing toward them._

_His chest felt aflame and a broad grin broke through his terror as he knew it was her. And when she saw him her typical mean, focused look was replaced by a smile that mirrored his own. Tears filled his eyes as he reached for her._

_"Shego!" he cried in joy as she landed gracefully in front of him. Scarcely a moment later he embraced her around the shoulders while her arms wrapped around his middle and gripped him tightly. Relief and peace coursed through him as he pulled her smaller form snugly into his. "You came! I thought I was going to die up here!"_

_She didn't respond. Confused, Drakken opened his eyes which he hadn't realized were closed._

_He gasped and staggered back. His arms were empty, and his only company in the alien corridor were the stars._

_"Shego!?" he cried, turning around in a hurry. But all traces of her—and Kim and Ron—were gone._

_A great dizziness swept him and he turned in horror as the walls began closing in around him. His vine—which he had forgotten about—slithered out from his collar and began weaving latticed barriers against the impending doom, but they were no match for the strength of the alien technology._

_"No! No! Someone help meeeeee! Shegoooooo!"_

* * *

There was a strange electricity and pressure in the air as Drakken sped the hovercraft back to Middleton. _'Now I know how Santa Claus feels…'_ he thought as he wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. Thankfully the invasion hadn't been quite as worldwide as originally feared, mostly only major cities having been targeted.

His plants were spreading and taking out the alien robots, and with that end accomplished he hurried back to the root of his operations. Suddenly a familiar voice shrieking in terror drew his gaze skyward. He saw a blazing trail like that of a meteorite ascending seconds before it impacted the Lorwardian spacecraft, destroying it in a massive explosion. He stared wide-eyed as the flaming wreckage rained down and he halted his vehicle for a moment as he wondered how on earth the destruction could have been accomplished. It certainly hadn't been his plants.

Suddenly the air pressure around him normalized and his ears popped with the unexpected change. His skin tingled as the electricity begin to dissipate, and a tension he hadn't known he was carrying left with the sensation and brought a heavy return to reality. He pushed forward on the accelerator of the hovercraft and headed back toward where he'd left the heart of the action.

When he arrived he found that the webs of his plants remained, flowers of pink, green, and blue giving a false sense of security and masking their savagery. In the center of the rubble below his eyes locked on the black-clad Kim Possible, her mussed hair blowing in the wind as she embraced her dorky space-suit clad boyfriend. Shego was nowhere to be seen, he realized, as he brought the craft down slowly.

"What happened?" he asked as he leapt down and cautiously lingered several yards from the teens, "What'd I miss?"

The two put a foot of space between them, but Kim's arms remained around her boyfriend's neck as he shyly brushed back his sweat-dampened hair.

"You kinda had to be here," Stoppable said, the pair of them grinning broadly.

"Where's Shego?" Drakken asked, looking around the rubble. The last thing he wanted to think about was another Kim Possible victory. She'd have been nothing without his plants this time, surely.

Kim suddenly gasped and began running and leaping through the rubble. Drakken blinked and after a moment made to follow, hurrying to match pace with an equally confused Stoppable. No way would he be left out this time.

He lifted his eyes as he heard Kim skid to a stop and his heart leapt into his throat at what he saw: Shego, still wearing her space suit, lay face down and un-moving in the dirt, limbs splayed and hair wild around her.

"Shego!" he cried desperately as he dropped to his knees at her side. He reached to turn her over but Kim's open palm in front of his face halted him.

"Wait," she said, as her other hand felt his sidekick's neck for a pulse.

A growl rumbled in his chest as he defiantly—but tenderly—pulled Shego to him and laid her head atop his folded knees.

"She's _my_ sidekick, I think I know what's best."

"Dude, even _I_ know you don't move a person when you don't know what their injuries are."

"Her heart's stopped," Kim's blunt interruption brought Drakken's focus back down. Kim was leaning over Shego's face now and had a hand pressed to her chest. "And she's not breathing."

Drakken was sure his own heart stopped for a moment as he stared down at his sidekick's closed eyes and still form. She was a dead weight—he cursed his brain for choosing that word—on his lap, her arms and legs limp and askew where he had dragged her. A paralyzing fear suddenly gripped his being and he found himself unable to speak.

"You're still CPR certified, right KP? I mean, all the babysitting..." Stoppable was saying. Drakken heard him as if from a distance, his blood thumping in his ears as he stared at Shego's face. It was the most serene he had ever seen her.

"There's probably still time," Kim answered, pushing up the sleeves of her graduation robe. "She'll have to be flat on the ground, Drakken. Drakken? Let go!"

Drakken blinked back to awareness and realized he was holding tight to one of Shego's shoulders and his other hand was fastened around her wrist. He knew Kim was right of course, and forced himself to release his protective hold and let the teen gently begin moving his sidekick down.

"Whoa man, are you hurt?" Stoppable asked. Drakken blinked at the sudden appearance of thick smears of blood on his thighs. His eyes widened again, and he went through the mental analysis so fast he didn't even need to give presence to any of the thoughts. His hand was already moving cautiously beneath Shego's head, where Kim's had moved too.

He bit the inside of his cheeks as his stomach churned at the feeling beneath his fingers. Through the thick hair where he should have felt hard bone, he felt the unnatural give of the skull as he pressed it notably against soft tissue.

Kim gasped as they both drew their hands back in time. He looked first at his own black glove, covered in the slick substance and then at Kim's hand, streaked red to her wrist. He followed her arm to her heaving chest and up to her terrified eyes. And again he found himself paralyzed, but with something deeper than fear that he couldn't put a name to. He made one feeble attempt at speech, but his closed throat prevented it.

"Wade," Kim said, talking into the device on her wrist. "I hate to ask you to do this, but I need a scan of Shego's skull and brain for injuries. I'm...afraid it's not going to be good."

_"On it, Kim,"_ the boy said as a beam came out of the wrist-device and passed over Shego's head.

Drakken saw Stoppable begin anxiously biting the nails of both hands—well, space gloves—as he stared at the bloody hand that Kim still had raised in the air.

"How is it?" Kim asked. "And...her heart's stopped and she's not breathing. Probably more than five minutes now," she finished dejectedly.

Drakken peered at the small screen on Kim's wristwatch as the boy's eyes grew wide and he pushed his chair back from his desk.

_"Oh, __**man.**__"_

* * *

Drakken fidgeted with the edges of his gloves as he sat tensely in the back of the recording studio, waiting.

"You should have changed," his mother whispered for the seventh time. He sighed.

"This is how I'm most comfortable, Mother," he repeated what he had told her after the fourth time. He glanced down at his blue coat draped over his knees. If he looked hard, he could still see the blood stains.

"They want to interview a hero, not a...mad scientist."

Drakken felt his mother's eyes on him, but kept his gaze forward on the green screen. Facing his mother with the truth of his occupation had been painful, and she clearly wasn't going to let it go any time soon.

"Oh, my poor Drewbie..."

Drakken clenched his teeth.

"So many months in jail... And what for? What did any of it get you?"

He understood her anger. He had lied for over twenty years, after all. But he didn't need her judgment. Not now.

Thankfully, he was spared another verbal lashing by the approach of one of the news team holding a shiny, gold medal with the emblem of the United Nations attached to a red, white, and blue ribbon.

"Dr. Drakken?" the man said. "They want you to wear this for the interview. It's going to air during prime time after the UN broadcast. You'll have to give it back so they can present it to you officially at the UN."

The medal was held out and Drakken hesitated for a moment before reaching out and taking it. The gold was heavy in his hand, the etching on its face intricate.

"Sound man wants to mic you. Over here," the man gestured, and Drakken rose to follow absently, still staring at the medal. He had already been pardoned in exchange for the formula to his plant mutagen. And now he was going to be celebrated.

He set the medal around his neck and was surprised to feel...joy. The sensation was unexpected, after all the turmoil of the past several days. The imprisonment, days filled with endless questioning and bargaining, sleepless nights, facing his mother, the confrontation with Team Go...

And of course, Shego.

He blinked away the vision of green and lifted the medal instead to examine it again. It seemed to be real gold. He was...the hero of the world. And it wasn't to him now, but to others to make sure the public knew just who had prevented their destruction. And they were glad to do it! He would finally—

His thoughts were broken as a man slipped a small wire down his collar, right next to his flower-vine-thing and attached a small microphone to his lapel.

"We're going to...skip makeup, all right Sir?"

_'He called me 'sir'...'_

"Sir? If you'll sit over here?"

"Yes, of course," Drakken said, moving to the plush chair in front of the green screen that would face the interviewer—a man he recognized from one of the evening reporting programs—and settling back comfortably. The man escorting him had him shift several times until the angle was just so for each camera, and then he disappeared as the reporter took the chair across from him.

"It's nice to meet you Dr. Drakken," the man said, fairly staring at him.

Drakken winced slightly under the scrutiny. "Eh...your...name escapes me."

"Brian Barrett," the man said, planting his feet on the ground.

"Okay, we're rolling," a voice caught Drakken's attention and he turned to see a large camera lens pointed directly at him. He glanced around the area past the green screen and saw no less than six cameras, capturing all different angles. He self-consciously felt behind his neck for the flower...vine...whatever, and was relieved to find it tucked beneath his collar.

"A pleasure to meet you Dr. Drakken!" Barrett said, and Drakken turned back to see the man extending a hand and flashing a perfectly white smile. All traces of inappropriate staring were gone, replaced with cheer and interest.

So that's how it was. Well, game on.

Drakken shook the offered hand and returned the smile. "The pleasure is mine...Mr. Barrett," he said, remembering the name at the last moment.

"I speak for everyone here at WNEW when I say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Your sentient vines are nothing short of genius."

Drakken sat up a little taller with pride, despite himself. "Well..."

"And on a personal note, my sister and her kids were in Madison Square Gardens when the aliens attacked. If not for your intervention, I could have lost them."

Drakken deflated just as quickly as he'd puffed up, and he forced the grin to stay on his face. "Well..." he repeated more weakly, "it was...what had to be done."

Barrett sat back in his chair and lifting a notepad, gestured toward the main camera with it. "We've been asking viewers to call in for the past week with their questions for you, and we've made a list of all the most-asked. So..." he turned to address the camera, "now begins the dialogue between the world, and Dr. Drakken."

Drakken bit the inside of his cheek as tension began to seep into his body.

"And the most asked question," Barrett said, turning back with a smile, "which I'm sure is no surprise... Why are you blue?"

Drakken laughed. Too loudly, he realized, and forced himself to sit back and try to relax. Everything would be fine. "Funny story, actually. You see it was a Tuesday..."

As Drakken recounted the story, he felt more and more at ease. The reporter was genuinely listening and not interrupting. In his peripheral vision he could see his mother standing next to the main camera, watching. And though he knew she was still angry, he could tell she was smiling.

Hero-life would take getting used to, but it would be worth it.

"Fascinating," Barrett said, when Drakken finally finished. "And the second most-asked question from our viewers... Why did you become a villain?"

The brief peace Drakken had felt evaporated like a puff of smoke and he felt a weight begin a slow descent from his chest to his stomach.

"Ah...well, that's a...different story..." He swallowed nervously and bit his cheek harder to keep from frowning.

"The public wants to know who their hero is," Barrett encouraged with his perfect grin.

The cheer was no longer convincing, but Drakken felt trapped. "Well, it...started in college when my friends started making fun of me. Of course, I had been made fun of for most of my life..."

He relayed the tale in full, the journalist again letting him speak uninterrupted. When he recounted the weeks of bullying he faced after the original Bebes he felt anger beginning to take hold of him. He paused to take a deep breath and dug his fingers into the armrests of the chair. When he continued he spoke more slowly and clinically, forcing himself to remain detached. It certainly wouldn't do for the world to see their hero showing symptoms of villainy.

"I couldn't attend my classes anymore. I was a laughing-stock. Even the professors thought so. Somehow I decided the best way to prove myself and get revenge would be...through illicit means. And over time it went past revenge until...I decided to take over the world." He bit down hard on the desire to go on about his genius. A familiar voice was in his head telling him to keep it short and make sure to use real words.

He stared hard at Barrett to shut out the voice.

"I'm sure everyone out there can relate in some way," the journalist said. Drakken gripped the armrests harder. _'No,'_ he wanted to say, _'no you don't know what that kind of betrayal is like.'_ But instead he sat back and smiled. "Now the third most-asked question from our viewers gets a bit deeper into your villainy. How did you feel about killing people?"

Drakken was caught off-guard. The smiling facade fell instantly as he pulled back in surprise. "Wh-what...? No no, you're...mistaken. I didn't kill people," he said, waving his hands defensively. "I didn't kill anyone," he repeated, looking over to his mother. Her face was the strangest mix of anger and despair he had ever seen.

The journalist turned the page of his notebook and pulled out a stack of papers. "Your police record shows several charges for felony murder. People suffocating in...cheese? Several Florida residents dying from complications after being under the influence of your mind-control; multiple earthquake-related deaths when you tried to merge the continents... I could go on?"

Drakken was sweating now and kept glancing between Barrett, his mother, and the emergency exit sign in his peripheral vision.

"Of course, the one that the whole world is familiar with is when you engineered Bueno Nacho kids' meal toys to be killer robots. So many innocent people, dead for absolutely nothing," the journalist continued. "Simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Memories of all the schemes Barrett had mentioned were flashing through his head, but they were all suddenly replaced by a new image. One of blood-drenched black hair draped across his lap.

"So, Dr. Drakken?"

Drakken blinked away the image and stared at Barrett's face. "I'm sorry... Can you repeat the question?"

"How do you feel about the people you've killed?"

Drakken's heart pounded as more and more images that had been the source of his inability to sleep kept flashing before his eyes. He swallowed slowly, his throat dry as he looked through the mirage and at Barrett's face beyond. Ultimately, her death was his fault. He couldn't deny the reality he had created.

"I feel...pain," he said quietly.

Barrett looked at him calmly, studiously, straight into his eyes. The journalist finally sighed softly and his brows furrowed as he shook his head in an expression of...sympathy?

The contrast brought Drakken back to the present, and he leaned back heavily in the chair and carefully measured his breaths.

"Do you still have a desire to do evil things, and to harm people? That's the next question from our viewers."

Drakken glanced around, remembering where he was. He couldn't stop himself from fidgeting with his gloves as he responded, though.

"I never...really wanted to hurt people. I wanted..." He closed his eyes and brought his mind back to college again. "I wanted them to stop. Laughing. And to recognize the great genius that I am. Everywhere I went, people knew me for my failure. I just wanted the world to know me for my greatness."

He felt sick to his stomach now, recalling all of the more unpleasant aspects of doing evil that he simply turned a blind eye to. One couldn't be a villain without hurting others in some way. Unless you were legitimate like Jack Hench. But Drakken didn't have the time to build a legitimate empire.

"So you don't want to do evil anymore?"

Drakken shook his head. "No." But even as he said it, he felt the selfish desire wind its tendrils around his heart. He thought he meant it...did he not?

"And the last most-asked question from our viewers... Why did you decide to save the world?"

At that, Drakken returned to himself in an instant, straightening up in the chair and adopting the fake-nice look he had started the interview with. The truth was simply that he hadn't. He just needed to stop Warmonga from taking over the world, because...it was _his_ world! Not some idiotic alien traveler's. He wasn't saving anyone, just his own interests. It was entirely selfish.

"Because..." he said with a pleasant smile, "the world is worth fighting for."

* * *

He didn't have to act too surprised when they placed the medal on him officially; the cheers of the crowd were enough to make him giddy, and he smiled out at all of them with what he hoped looked like humility. Truthfully he was nervous that they would ask more difficult questions, but they didn't. All were forward-looking and hopeful.

Between interviews his mother had scolded his unpreparedness for the first one and gave him tips on how to reply to questions in later ones. Never one to scoff at his mother's advice, he used her words and answered things broadly and ambiguously.

What would he do now? Find a way to unite all of humanity under one common goal. How would he do it? By finding ways to stop planet-threatening problems. What was it like being a hero? He didn't consider himself a hero—he simply did what had to be done. Any of them would have done the same if they had his genius, right?

After the ceremony and lots of photos and a fancy dinner with the presidents of nine countries, he lay on the bed of his hotel suite grinning up at the ceiling. There were definite perks to being a 'hero' that he hadn't considered at first. Maybe he would milk this situation for awhile before going back to world-domination. In fact, it would probably work to his advantage.

"Drew," his mother said, half-knocking as she passed through his open door. "Have you thought any more about—?"

"I already told you Mother..." he sighed, "I'm not moving back home."

"But sweetie, you're going to need my help to get everything back to normal."

Drakken sat up in one swift move, a chaotic mix of emotions coursing through him.

Normal? _Normal!?_ He didn't even know what normal was anymore. If the normal she meant was a lifetime of being teased despite all his best efforts to be 'normal,' then he didn't want it. If she meant moving on from villainy, he didn't know for sure that he wanted that—after all, what would 'moving on' mean? It had been a week and there had been no job offers. But there had been two days in prison which he only bribed himself out of by surrendering his mutagen. Not mention that he was now some sort of weird plant-human hybrid and had no idea how or if that could even be remedied. For all he knew, it would kill him in a matter of days.

No, whatever she thought was 'normal' certainly wasn't going to happen.

But neither was what he had considered normal for the past several years. As a 'hero' he certainly couldn't disappear into a secret lair and plot world domination again. He couldn't hide...anywhere. And what was the point of world domination when in fact, the world did seem to recognize his genius now? They would definitely hate him more if he conquered it after saving them all.

"No, Mother," he shook his head and fell back down on the bed. He grabbed the TV remote and pushed the power button, hoping for something to drown her out as well as his thoughts. "I'm...I'm grateful, but I need to handle things myself."

He had no idea what to do with his life now. The medal was still around his neck, the gold a weight on his chest as it rose and fell with breaths that were too quick. In an instant, a flash of yellow in his peripheral vision signaled the arrival of the petals that often framed his face now. He sighed and let them be. Mad scientist, decorated hero, and laughing-stock. That's what he was.

"Look Drewbie, you're on TV again."

He turned his head to see the small, hotel TV screen. His interest was piqued by the stern face of Brian Barrett, while his own picture was in the corner in double—one, a shot from the UN ceremony, and another an old mugshot.

He sat up and turned up the TV volume.

_"Is he hero or villain? Your questions and the world's answered now, in this one-hour expose on Dr. Drakken."_

"One hour...? That interview wasn't even thirty minutes..."

_"It begins in a small town in New Jersey, at the childhood home of Drew Theodore P. Lipsky,"_ Barrett continued in voice-over as a picture of his mother's house appeared on the screen.

"Hey!" he cried, lurching forward. None of the interviews he had had talked about his childhood in any way. He looked over at his mother, who looked equally perplexed.

She sat beside him on the bed and they watched and listened as an accurate but thinly detailed biography was painted of the blue man, all clearly leading up toward his turn to evil. There were quotes from old teachers and classmates, one from his first boss in high school, and then his college professors and former friends. None were kind.

_"Drew was most certainly a genius,"_ an old professor said, the program past its half-way point now. _"He finished every assignment ahead of everyone else and seemed to understand all the material before I even finished teaching it. But he was strange and secretive... He would work on private projects in the university laboratories, stealing materials, and then deny it. And he was careful about it too, so we couldn't prove it. With some of the experiments we knew he was conducting, we're not sure where he safely hid the materials."_

Drakken thought about his early weapon designs and the great lengths he had gone to to hide them. It had been no easy feat, either! He wished Barrett had asked him questions about his inventions. Those would have been fun to answer.

_"The only things we found were after he dropped out of school. He left so quickly that he forgot a few things. There were these blueprints for a new type of engine that revolutionized fuel consumption..."_

Drakken remembered suddenly the gift for his cousin Eddie that he had never finished and forgotten about, in his haste to leave MIST. Perhaps now it was finished he should—

"Hey! They stole my designs!"

He rose from the bed, fists balled in anger as he stared at the scans of blueprint after blueprint of technologies he had dreamed up in every field, for which he had failed to file patents. His chest heaved in anger as he listened to how his inventions were being used to better the world and he was receiving none of the credit for it.

_"And we couldn't give any of the designs back since he disappeared. And after he turned up blue on our security cameras when he robbed the university a year later, we figured...might as well patent them ourselves,"_ the professor finished.

_"And so Drew Lipsky faded into infamy and Dr. Drakken, mad scientist was born. And now with an exclusive interview filmed after the ceremony at the UN, here is Brian Barrett with Dr. Drakken."_

"But it was filmed hours before the ceremony..." Drakken protested, sitting back on the bed next to his mother. He watched as the camera swept over the false background of a UN office that had replaced the green screen.

_"How do you feel about the people you've killed?"_

_"I didn't kill anyone."_ The camera angle switched off of Barrett's open, emotional face to the anxious one of Drakken.

"They did that thing where they show it out of order," his mother gasped in astonishment. "They're trying to make my heroic baby look bad! Well, they're going to hear from me!"

Drakken barely looked up as his mother stomped out of the room, presumably to the telephone. He watched slack-jawed as the interview continued to paint him as nothing short of psychotic, the camera zooming in on his twitching fingers gripping the chair each time a difficult question was asked, the clips having been edited to suit the intent of the expose.

"Could the mad scientist's statement be genuine, or is there another meaning behind it, leading us to believe that he may resume his world-dominating evil schemes? We go to the public now, for their comments."

The screen changed to daytime outside the UN and played a montage of brief comments from various citizens. He noticed a large majority holding protest signs against him. Why hadn't he been told there were protestors?

_"Should Dr. Drakken be forgiven for his former crimes?"_

_"Absolutely not. My nephew was killed when those Diablo robots attacked. One good deed doesn't abolish a lifetime of sin."_

_"Heck, I'll forgive him. Who knows what those aliens would have done to us? At least with Dr. Drakken we just know we're getting a second-rate villain."_

_"Well, maybe a reduced sentence? I mean, I believe in justice. But he did save us from invading aliens. It's a tough one, morally."_

Drakken sank down listening to the honest words of the people. He picked up his medal in his hand and stared at it. The people didn't love him after all. Did his victory mean anything?

_"We have received authoritative word that Dr. Drakken has been pardoned of all his past crimes, in thanks for his world-saving heroics earlier this week. But will he now follow the path of the hero, or will he remain a villain?"_

The scene changed back to Barrett's final interview question from that day, and Drakken started when the camera panned down and zoomed in on the faint bloodstains on his lab coat.

_"The world is worth fighting for,"_ he answered and the camera panned back up to his oddly blank face. Ominous music finished out the program as the credits rolled, showing a montage of destruction that his years of capers had caused.

Drakken was fuming. They had lied to him. All of them! They wanted nothing more than a good story to boost their ratings! They were all evil and self-serving!

...Exactly like him.

The realization hit him like a slap in the face, and clutching the medal around his neck he strode out of the room.

"...and I'll have you know, if you don't put out an immediate retraction then my son is going to sue you and your—Drew? Where are you going?"

He passed his mother on the phone without a word and left the hotel room, yanking the yellow petals from around his neck as he went. Minutes later he found himself in his hover car, lifting off and flying up as high as it would take him, far away from reality.

* * *

_A great dizziness swept him and he turned in horror as the walls began closing in around him. His vine—which he had forgotten about—slithered out from his collar and began weaving latticed barriers against the impending doom, but they were no match for the strength of the alien technology._

_"No! No! Someone help meeeeee! Shegoooooo!"_

_The vines were ineffective. He turned wildly, looking for any chance of escape as the scrape of metal and the approaching tangle of his vines heralded his certain death._

_"Help! Someone help!" he cried as the vines began pressing against him. He held out his arms and pressed with all his might against the metal through the vines, but still the walls kept coming._

_"Noooooooo! Please, someone help me!"_

_Suddenly a heat and a flash of green fire surrounded him, scorching away all of his vines but leaving him untouched. He saw clearly now the gray walls that would kill him and an inhuman wail came out of his throat as they began touching him on all sides._

_'I'm going to die. I'm dying,' he thought as the pressure built and began forcing his bones to move into unnatural positions. 'How did this happen?'_

_The just as suddenly as the threat had come, it vanished. He blinked and turned around in shock, finding himself on a high platform—or stone?—rising out of dark clouds. The only sight in every direction were the stars and he gasped in wonder. What had happened?_

_"Sorry, Dr. D."_

_He whirled around. "Shego!?" She stood about twenty feet from him, hands uncharacteristically folded in front of her and a small, but peaceful smirk on her face. So Shego had saved him after all..._

_"You were there! And then you weren't!" he cried, rushing toward her as he had moments before on the ship._

_"Didn't mean to leave. Wasn't exactly my choice."_

_Drakken slowed his run as he realized he wasn't getting any closer to her, even though clouds were passing on his left and right._

_"Shego?"_

_The dark clouds began moving around her, swirling upward like one of the atmospheric science experiments he had performed in college. Her smile faded as she lifted one hand in a motionless wave moments before the clouds enveloped her entirely._

_"Shego!" he cried, reaching desperately toward her, finally making some ground. But when his hand touched the mist it evaporated and she was gone._

_"Come back! Shegooooooo!"_

Drakken jerked awake from the nightmare in shock, looking around him in panic. His heart rate began to slow when he realized he was on a familiar cliff, laying in a familiar field of flowers.

The nightmare wouldn't leave him alone. He'd been having it since the first night after the invasion, and every night since. It always happened exactly the same way. He had long given up trying to understand it, and now only wished it would go away so he could get some sleep. But just as when he had been hatching evil plots, sleep eluded him now in his new life as a hero.

For 'hero' the public had decided he was. Days after the news expose and his disappearance—rather, hopscotching from lair to lair trying to decide what to do—new protests had begun and a huge public campaign to wipe his record clean had gone forward. By the end of the second week after the invasion, the overwhelming opinion was that Dr. Drakken was the world's hero, and that any past sin could be forgiven.

He had gone back during the third week to try out this new life, and during the fourth week found himself firmly established at one of Japan's most up-and-coming robotics research facilities. He was now designing technologies to help combat any future alien invasions and anything else that might threaten the Earth, which was now working towards a united global government.

He received constant praise from peers and now attended interviews in which he heard nothing but thanks and even apologies from past nemeses. Even MIST apologized for stealing his inventions.

Drakken had everything. Well, almost everything.

Conspicuously absent in every interview and news article was any mention of a certain former hero-turned-villain, in favor of the new villain-turned-hero. Until the day he went back to Middleton to receive an honorary doctorate at MIST. Of course, the local news wanted an interview about the hero they considered 'one of their own' due to his association with a certain red-haired teenager. But the doctorate was the last thing on his mind when he left Middleton that day.

"Now Dr. Drakken," Tricia Lebowski said, holding the microphone beneath her chin as they stood outside the big sign in front of MIST, "she's been hardly mentioned by any of the networks, but Middleton will never forget your sidekick, Shego. We haven't been able to find any details, but we understand she was killed in the Lorwardian attack?"

Drakken suddenly found his throat dry as a microphone was shoved under his nose. "I...I, ah...would rather not talk about Shego, actually."

A weight suddenly fell into the pit of his stomach. It was the first time he had said her name since...

"I do apologize for your loss. The public wants to know, how instrumental was the former Team Go hero to your success as a villain?"

Drakken swallowed painfully as sweat began breaking out on his forehead. "She was everything, I... I said I don't want to talk about her," he squeaked out.

"I do apologize," Lebowski repeated. "The public also wants to know...was she more than a sidekick to you?"

Heart-racing, Drakken turned on his heel and ran to the hovercraft, his medal bouncing painfully against his chest. He was sure the news cameras were following his cowardly retreat, but... He couldn't talk about her. He just couldn't.

Hours later found him collapsed on a flower-covered hillside asleep in a puddle of his own tears. And now the sun was setting as he woke from the nightmare that seemed would plague him forever.

He sat up and stared past the edge of the cliff at the blinding reflection of the sun glistening on the sea. It was an appropriate spot, he had decided, much to her brothers' dissatisfaction. But as the world's hero he had some sway in the matter.

He crossed his legs and brought his eyes down to the headstone. All that was inscribed on it was her name, date of birth, and date of death.

He stared down at the carved name even as more of his flowers curled around the stone. He wondered what she would say about his life now.

He had a great job...that he performed during the day, and then went home to an empty penthouse apartment every night. He was lauded worldwide...but no one ever wanted more conversation out of him than TV and magazine interviews.

He had two Nobel Prizes for things he had invented back at MIST that were now recognized as his. HOURS Magazine called him the 'greatest genius of modern history.' And his world-saving medal from the UN hung around his neck daily to remind him that he finally had everything he had ever wanted.

A hand reached up to grip the medal as he thought about the sleepless nights at his penthouse. His only companion in that place were his nightmares.

It had taken only a week for him to realize he was lonely. So after awhile he'd bucked up the courage to invite one of his colleagues in Japan if he wanted to get drinks after work one night. The other scientist had made a polite apology and excuse, but it was clear to Drakken from the look in the man's eyes that there would be absolutely no socializing outside work with the blue freak.

He gripped his medal more tightly. _'I have everything...'_ He'd been telling himself that on repeat for more days than he could count now. But time was doing absolutely nothing to make him believe it.

It had been six weeks since...well, since the invasion. That's what everyone else called it. In his mind, he didn't identify the event that way.

He gently set his other hand on the gravestone and ran his gloved fingers over the carved name.

"Are you happy...wherever you are?" he whispered. "Are you...are you anywhere?"

The sea before him still shimmered with the light of the setting sun, but above him dark clouds were gathered. A soft roll of thunder was his only warning before the warm rain began to fall. It wasn't long before his tears joined the raindrops running down his face.

"I miss you," he choked out between sobs. When had he started sobbing?

He stood from his crouch in front of the grave and stepped to the edge of the cliff, looking down as the raindrops dampened the beach below.

It was time to stop lying to himself. The world...hadn't been worth fighting for after all.

He took out his state-of-the-art Blackberry and sent a short email, and then set the device back in his coat pocket. Then he took a small vial out of the same pocket and tucked it into his pants pocket, patting it gently. Next he took off his blue lab coat—something he had refused to part with—folded it, and lay it at the foot of her grave. He let his eyes linger for a moment on where the bloodstains were still visible if he looked closely enough. He never did have it properly cleaned.

Last, he took off the medal and set it atop the gravestone.

When he turned he glanced at the hovercraft for a moment before turning to take the narrow pathway down the cliff side. It was precarious, and he nearly lost his balance a few times, especially after the rain and wind picked up. But finally he made it down to the beach and purposefully approached the waters.

He shielded his eyes against the sun as he stared out on the sea. It had darkened where the storm clouds hung over it now, but beyond it still glistened in the light of the setting sun. Light was hope, and promise. But when the sun finished its descent the light would vanish, giving victory to the clouds. Light was just a facade, anyway.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward into the surf. The waters were surprisingly cold, for the Caribbean. He grit his teeth and forced himself to ignore it as he stepped further and further out into the sea. The rain had plastered his hair to his face and he swept it out of his eyes to stare at the roll of the waves as he went deeper and deeper.

When he was nearly up to his neck and the saltwater began splashing into his mouth, his vines made their appearance. In a display more magnificent than anything they had done yet, they weaved a lattice raft and lifted him up out of the waters, forcing him to float on the rocky seas.

He had expected this.

He took the small vial out of his pants pocket and uncorked it. He carefully poured the thick, glowing green liquid out onto the vines. Instantly they burst into a green flame resistant to the waters and the lattice began burning away beneath him. He grit his teeth when the fire traveled up against his neck and seconds later he let out a scream. The pain caused him to see white, such to the point that he didn't notice when the vines had finally burned away and he fell back into the waters again.

The shock caused him to take a large gulp of sea water into his lungs and he began desperately flailing and gasping for air, acting on instinct rather than intent. But as his situation set in he forced himself to stop his vain paddling even as he continued to choke. His head broke the surface of the waters and he gasped for air and blinked vainly into the rain and slaps of salt water against his face.

He caught a glimpse of green fire burning the remnants of his vines and felt a final swell of satisfaction. He knew concentrating Shego's power would be good for something someday.

It seemed she had saved him one last time.

His lungs, full of water were failing to draw in any oxygen. His vision went black as he gasped for air again, flailing against his will as he sank beneath the surface into the depths. Heat, pain, and pressure came against him on all sides, like the walls of the Lorwardian spaceship in his nightmares.

_'I'm going to die. I'm dying,'_ he thought, just like in his nightmare.

_'Are you happy? Are you anywhere?'_ he called out with the last thread of hope in his heart.

The void he had willingly entered only expanded and became silent. There were no stars this time as the walls finally closed in. He seemed to have forgotten how to move his arms to try to get out. Did he have arms anymore? He couldn't feel them. He couldn't even feel the green fire at his neck anymore as he sank deeper...and deeper...and deeper...

_'I miss you so much...'_

Deeper...into the dark...

_'Shego...'_

-  
fin.

* * *

**A/N: Can I just add...I've sort of always had a fic like this in my head, because I never cease to be shocked by the way Shego was taken out in a single blow in the episode. I didn't like that they treated it as...she just got up and was fine. That was intended to look serious on the show, and then they didn't treat it serious. And I get why, but still. Anyway. Hope you enjoyed the sadness.**


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